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On one of my visits to Bahrain, a seven year old cousin of mine wrote me a little letter just before I flew back to Tokyo, asking me when I’ll finally be back in Bahrain for good. This little letter has been hanging above my desk for quite a while now, but I never thought much of it until recently. In fact, this letter has a lot to do with why I haven’t posted much on this blog lately.

Earlier this month, I started what is my last academic year of the Master’s program here in Hitotsubashi University. Finally. Now that the light at the end of the tunnel is visible, I am beginning to think/wonder/panic about what I will do next year after I graduate with a Master’s degree in Economic History. I feel that I’ve got many options, but each option would require me to give up something(s) valuable.

One option is to continue doing my PhD here in Japan. My scholarship will be extended for another 3-4 years, which would give me enough time to get my PhD from Hitotsubashi University, which is considered to be prestigious here in Japan. This was the path I was ‘headed’ towards when I first arrived in Japan. I’m beginning to have second thoughts lately but would still consider it. Another option would be to do my PhD elsewhere. Funding would not be guaranteed. I was thinking of going to Europe for my PhD since I had already studied in the United States and Japan. I think it would be nice to spend time in another part of the world. But that’s just an idea. Another option would be to take a break from academics and get a job. Ideally, I’d prefer to go back to Bahrain and work if I could find something suitable, but I wouldn’t mind considering working somewhere else (it would also be nice to finally start making money, instead of living the broke college student life for a change!). I might even be open to the idea of doing my PhD part time, if I really wanted to pursue that path. Of course, there’s also always that option of going really wild and just running away to some OldWorld cultural capital in the East and learning to play a new musical instrument (I wonder how well that would go down with people I know).

I understand that having so many options to choose from could be something good, but it’s also very confusing. I don’t think that I can decide on anything yet. It’ll probably have to wait until after July (more on this in the next paragraph). For now, all I can do is ’sleep on it’.

On another note, I’ve been accepted to present my research in the 2008 Gulf Studies Conference at the University of Exeter in the UK, which will be taking place between July 1 - 4. I will be presenting my research paper, which is entitled Creating a Braudelian Gulf: A New Economic History of Bahrain and Microecologies in the Gulf. The paper will be a comparative study of the Economic History of Bahrain and the Gulf region (which includes the GCC, Iraq and Iran) based on Fernand Braudel’s triptych system in highlighting the different speeds of the history of a region. The other presentations in this conference are going to cover a wide array of different topics ranging from sociology to literature to history, and the participants will be coming from many different countries. I will be the only participant representing Japanese academics and I really hope to give everyone there a good impression. I’m very excited about this chance and I look forward to all the meaningful discussions that will take place at the conference. I also hope that the conference will be a good chance for me to speak to different people to decide on what path I’ll end up taking. (I’m still trying to figure out whether there would be any way to get financial support to go to the UK from any companies from Bahrain or Japan. Any advice on this would be very much appreciated!).